Eric Weinstein: How gov/uni/industry create labor shortages of scientists & tech work

[PC2]

Unabridged title: How & Why Government, Universities, & Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists & High-Tech Workers.

Long term labor shortages do not happen naturally in market economies.

"Upcoming labor market shortages will devastate Science and Engineering.

This was a mantra heard through much of the 1980s. And yet, the predicted “seller’s market” for talent never materialized as unemployment rates actually spiked for newly minted PhDs in technical fields. In fact, most US economists seemed to think that the very idea of labor market shortages hardly made sense in a market economy since wages could simply rise to attract more entrants.

In the late nineties, in the course of research into immigration, I became convinced that our US high skilled immigration policy simply did not add up intellectually. As I studied the situation, it became increasingly clear that the groups purporting to speak for US scientists in Washington DC (e.g. NSF, NAS, AAU, GUIRR) actually viewed themselves as advocates for employers in a labor dispute with working scientists and were focused on undermining scientists’ economic bargaining power through labor market intervention and manipulation.

Increasingly the research seemed to show that interventions by government, universities and industry in the US labor market for scientists, especially after the University system stopped growing organically in the early 1970s were exceedingly problematic. By 1998, it was becoming obvious that the real problems of high skilled immigration were actually rather well understood by an entire class of policy actors who were not forthcoming about the levers of policy they were using to influence policy. The NSF/NAS/GUIRR complex appeared to be feigning incompetence by issuing labor market studies that blatantly ignored wages and market dynamics and instead focused on demographics alone.

During the late 1990s I became convinced that in order to orchestrate lower wages for scientists, there would have to have been a competent economic study done to guide the curious policy choices that had resulted in the flooded market for STEM PhDs. For this theory to be correct, the private economic study would have had to have been done studying both supply and demand so that the demand piece could later be removed, resulting in the bizarre ‘supply only’ demographic studies released to the public. Through a bit of economic detective work, I began a painstaking search of the literature and discovered just such a study immediately preceded the release of the foolish demography studies that provided the public justification for the Immigration Act of 1990. This needle was located in the haystack of documents the NSF was forced to turn over when the House investigated the NSF for faking alarms about a shortfall.

The title of this study was “The Pipeline For Scientific and Technical Personnel: Past Lessons Applied to Future Changes of Interest to Policy-Makers and Human Resource Specialists.” The study was undated and carried no author’s name. Eventually I gathered my courage to call up the National Science Foundation and demand to speak to the study’s author. After some hemming and hawing, I was put through to a voice belonging to a man I had never heard of named Myles Boylan. In our conversation, it became clear that it was produced in 1986, as predicted, immediately before the infamous and now disgraced demographic shortfall studies.

The author turned out, again as predicted, not to be a demographer, but a highly competent Ph.D. in economics who was fully aware of the functioning of the wage mechanism. But, as the study makes clear, the problem being solved was not a problem of talent but one of price: scientific employers had become alarmed that they would have to pay competitive market wages to US Ph.D.s with other options. The study’s aim was not to locate talent but to weaken its ability to bargain with employers by using foreign labor to undermine the ability to negotiate for new Ph.D.s

That study was a key link in a chain of evidence leading to an entirely different view of the real origins of the Immigration Act of 1990s and the H1-B visa classification. In this alternative account, American industry and Big Science convinced official Washington to put in place a series of policies that had little to do with any demographic concerns. Their aims instead were to keep American scientific employers from having to pay the full US market price of high skilled labor. They hoped to keep the US research system staffed with employees classified as “trainees,” “students,” and “post-docs” for the benefit of employers. The result would be to render the US scientific workforce more docile and pliable to authority and senior researchers by attempting to ensure this labor market sector is always flooded largely by employer-friendly visa holders who lack full rights to respond to wage signals in the US labor market.

The correlate of these objectives were shifts in orientation toward building bridges to Asia and especially China, so that senior scientists, technologists, and educators could capitalize on technological, employment, and business opportunities from Asian (and particularly Chinese) expansion. This, in turn, would give US scientific employers and researchers access to the products of Asian educational systems which stress drill, rote learning, obedience, and test driven competition while giving them relief from US models which comparatively stress greater creativity, questioning, independence, and irreverence for authority.

I wrote this up in a study that the National Bureau of Economic Research published. Until a few weeks ago, it was available on their website. With other studies now appearing that are consonant with my conclusions and the Trump administration studying a possible revision of legislation on visas, I am grateful for INET’s encouragement and willingness to republish my study.

Do you agree or disagree with Weinstein's argument?

I think society pushing STEM is okay but it has to be framed in a true way. Not as a solution to a crisis that doesn't exist.

As far as H-1B visas my stance is that they are not an effective way to get foreign top STEM talent into the US. The USCIS has quotas, but they don't screen applicants to see if they are rare top talent based on measurable metrics.

[satimy]

Stealing the smartest from poorest nations isn't a whole lot different than just stealing their oil.

[PC2]

Stealing the smartest from poorest nations isn't a whole lot different than just stealing their oil.

I think the stereotype you are channeling here is the type of person who doesn't care about bringing in the smartest immigrants anyways. But rather to use that concept to open up a pathway where immigrants are not even individually screened based on a desirable criteria.

[PC2]

This sounds like anti-capitalistic whining.

I am critical of anarcho-capitalism. I have arguments against it but I'm sorry if you would only consider it "whining".

I'm for a mixed economy and rational nation states.

[NED funded]

Stealing the smartest from poorest nations isn't a whole lot different than just stealing their oil.

We don't "steal" them. Immigrants want to come here and work in the US. This is more of an issue in the high tech industry, in which I agree that section seems already full and arguments in favor of more don't really hold up.

[Barnabas]

It's not even wages. It's more about not having to offer any benefits since you aren't required to by law to a temporary employee. They save more money than you think but the open borders people don't care.

[Astigmatizm]

I'm not sure that questioning the value of what is essentially advocacy of artificial wage inflation with a nationalistic tinge somehow supports anarcho-capitalism in any significant way.

I'm not nearly versed well enough in Economics to argue this fully. But isn't abusing the purchasing power of intellectuals -outside- of your nations own defined market - simply because in their market their price is very low. In order to have them lower the purchasing price(income) of your own intellectuals - Also artificial wage inflation?

In the perfect world of 'a natural/free market solves everything when you let its forces run'. That -should- work. But markets work very differently in different countries. Global trade is far from 'free' trade given all the currency devaluation that goes on.

This topic has been getting increasing nationalistic of late because people ask themselves the emotional question "Why is my country taking actions that hurt its citizens and benefit those outside of it?". They abuse that those from less-rich nations will revel at the chance to work in the West for a higher pay/standard of life (even though its lower on average to the rest of Western citizens) - you can't compete with someone who will always willingly work for less.

Is there a line to be drawn between 'protecting' your economy/markets. And going full-blown protectionism?

[ringpriest]

We don't "steal" them. Immigrants want to come here and work in the US. This is more of an issue in the high tech industry, in which I agree that section seems already full and arguments in favor of more don't really hold up.

Not to worry - Trump is going to fix all America's immigration "problems"; and I can state from personal experience that he's already done a great deal to address the "problem" of well-educated people from the rest of the world desiring to work in the US (on a short-, medium-, or long-term basis).

[NED funded]

I'm not nearly versed well enough in Economics to argue this fully. But isn't abusing the purchasing power of intellectuals -outside- of your nations own defined market - simply because in their market their price is very low. In order to have them lower the purchasing price(income) of your own intellectuals - Also artificial wage inflation?

What do you mean? The dude just said that high tech workers are opposed to immigration since it prevents further increases in their wages. What you are saying seems to be that since the immigrant sees a wage increase and the native a decrease it must be the same. Which is odd.

This topic has been getting increasing nationalistic of late because people ask themselves the emotional question "Why is my country taking actions that hurt its citizens and benefit those outside of it?". They abuse that those from less-rich nations will revel at the chance to work in the West for a higher pay/standard of life (even though its lower on average to the rest of Western citizens) - you can't compete with someone who will always willingly work for less.

Is there a line to be drawn between 'protecting' your economy/markets. And going full-blown protectionism?

This is false. Immigrants cause a shift in benefits, from the employee of a specific sector (high tech) to the rest of the economy. This is why you see a lot of backlash against low skill immigration and cultural arguments, instead of H1-Bs. Since most of the people are not affected by it.

Also not directed to you you but in general, there is a line between elegant english and economics.

[Underverse]

Postdoc pay is criminally low and there's been a push to change this. But other than that, I don't see any major flaws in the structure of STEM labor (although I do also have issues with how PIs are handled).

I also haven't seen any evidence that H1-B visas dampen salaries. People on H1-Bs and natives are all paid the same from what I've seen. There could be some effect from competition but H1-Bs are capped anyway.

To give people an idea of what salaries look like in STEM (where I am, at least):

Graduate student stipend: 30-35k
Postdoc: 40-50k (academia)
Industry scientist (PhD): 90-100k (starting)
PI: 110k

[Delana]

I don't think there's a lot of difference between a firm in California offering an employee in Michigan a larger salary rather than a Californian and an American firm offering an employee in India a larger salary rather than an American, aside from the fact that people are obviously more inclined to view Michigan and California as "us," while Americans are "us" and Indians are "them." It's all just lines on a map for the most part, and while those lines aren't totally meaningless as they have legal, economic, and sometimes cultural impact, talent is talent, no matter where you get it from. If people aren't worth as much now that they have to compete against a global labor pool, then oh well. Just because they overvalue their labor doesn't mean they're getting screwed. If they don't like the pay, then get out of or never go into the field, and as the labor pool shrinks, compensation will increase in response.

Additionally, in many cases these may be international organizations or businesses, and with no physical product to ship, they're more free to relocate nearer to the talent they're hiring if they feel it's adequate and don't want to pay whatever people in their current location demand, so I don't think you have much of a bargaining position to begin with. However, compensation for STEM is pretty good already, so I'm not sure why this needs to be an area of focus. What's the worst that happens? The obsession many have with STEM as somehow being the only "worthy" career paths goes down in flames? Oh well.

I'm not so sensitive to this, because at least people in STEM are by and large making living wages. That said, devaluing human capital to such an absurd degree, by not raising a figure when companies import what is essentially slave labor from wherever they can find it, is a good way to end up ruled by our new corporate overlords.

It's really a question of whether a government has the responsibility to protect its labor from foreign competition. That is to say, whether The People have the authority to protect themselves from foreign competition. They do.

[PC2]

I'm not sure that questioning the value of what is essentially advocacy of artificial wage inflation with a nationalistic tinge somehow supports anarcho-capitalism in any significant way.

Where did anyone advocate artificial wage inflation? Weinstein's main point is that the mantra of a damaging deficit of scientists and engineers is a false problem.

There isn't just a "nationalistic tinge", the whole topic is about the US and what it truly means to excel. That means national STEM that focuses on percentile improvement as opposed to degree quantity and batch quotas.

[Delana]

Postdoc pay is criminally low and there's been a push to change this. But other than that, I don't see any major flaws in the structure of STEM labor (although I do also have issues with how PIs are handled).

I also haven't seen any evidence that H1-B visas dampen salaries. People on H1-Bs and natives are all paid the same from what I've seen. There could be some effect from competition but H1-Bs are capped anyway.

To give people an idea of what salaries look like in STEM (where I am, at least):

Graduate student stipend: 30-35k
Postdoc: 40-50k (academia)
Industry scientist (PhD): 90-100k (starting)
PI: 110k

Where are you? A graduate student stipend here (east coast) is ~20K-24K, and that's on the higher end. Some places were down around 12K-15K when I was applying 6 years ago.

The rest of the scale is reasonably accurate. They are, however, completely incommensurate with the contributions those people make to their companies.

[Mormolyce]

So... he's talking about upmarket labour protectionism?

I must say I find it hilarious watching right wingers do this massive pirouette on trade protectionism. Who do you think has been driving corporate outsourcing for decades?

[PC2]

So... he's talking about upmarket labour protectionism?

I must say I find it hilarious watching right wingers do this massive pirouette on trade protectionism. Who do you think has been driving corporate outsourcing for decades?

This is closer to ad hominem than it is to making an argument for a policy position.

[Mormolyce]

This is closer to ad hominem than it is to making an argument for a policy position.

No, if I said it was false because of the person saying it, that would be an ad hominem.

Criticising the person saying it is just regular old criticism.

[Celista]

I'm not surprised at all and we've had several threads on STEM not being quite the pearly gates that it has promised. This is why in my opinion it is important that students choose a vocation based on a skillset or a passionate interest that will sustain him/her in the long run. Having interests or a skillset that coincides with an in-demand/lucrative career should be seen as more of a bonus; the job market/employment growth predictions are constantly changing and it is folly to plan a career around that.

[PC2]

No, if I said it was false because of the person saying it, that would be an ad hominem.

Criticising the person saying it is just regular old criticism.

Criticizing the person and not their point is regular old ad hominem.

In your case you just gave a generic comment about right wingers and made no argument at all.

[Mormolyce]

Criticizing the person and not their point is regular old ad hominem.

No, you're wrong.

An ad hominem is a formal logical fallacy in which you reject an argument because of the character of the person making it. It is not a get out of criticism free card.

Example:

PrimaryColor: It's cold outside today.
Mormolyce: You must be lying, you're a jackass.

-Ad hominem.

PrimaryColor: It's cold outside today.
Mormolyce: You're a jackass.

-Not an ad hominem.

[PC2]

No, you're wrong.

An ad hominem is a formal logical fallacy in which you reject an argument because of the character of the person making it. It is not a get out of criticism free card.

Example:

PrimaryColor: It's cold outside today.
Mormolyce: You must be lying, you're a jackass.

-Ad hominem.

PrimaryColor: It's cold outside today.
Mormolyce: You're a jackass.

-Not an ad hominem.

Both of those are ad hominem.

Google Define: Ad Hominen
1.(of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.
2. relating to or associated with a particular person.

Wiki
Ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.